“The anesthesia?” Again, it was Lester. Better to verify.
“Yeah.”
“So he was groggy, but he ate. Was his appetite normal?” When Daryl nodded, I asked, “He’s been drinking water?”
It was cool in the exam room, but Lester began panting, drool dripping from his tongue onto the exam table. “Yeah, he’s had water. What’s wrong with him, Doc?”
Two sets of forlorn eyes pinned me. I wanted to tell Daryl it was normal post-surgery behavior, or, barring that, reassure him that the problem could be easily fixed. I could do neither.
“I’m not sure,” I said. I pulled back Lester’s lips, checking his gums and the inside of his cheek. Both were pale. Since he’d just had surgery, I worried his pale gums indicated a hemorrhage. He needed blood work immediately, and I silently ran through the tests I should order.
Then there was the ophthalmic exam to check for pupil reactivity, which could also be useful in determining a toxicosis diagnosis.
“You kept him in his crate last night?” I asked.
“You know how he is, Doc. It’s hard to keep him out of trouble,” he said. “But I’ve done my best. Crated him last night. Took him into the bathroom when I showered. The only time he was out of my sight was when some guy selling salvation knocked on my door, but even then, it was less than a minute. Thirty seconds.”
“Not in the market for salvation, huh?” I placed my stethoscope to the dog’s chest. One hundred and sixty beats per minute.
“Always. Something’s wrong, isn’t it?”
I got that familiar shiver in my gut, equal parts intuition and experience.
“His heart’s beating faster than normal, and his respiration’s labored too.” Daryl stroked Lester’s fur, attempting to calm them both, but the dog’s whimpering grew louder. “Has he vomited, or had diarrhea?”
“No.”
“Excessive urination?”
“No.”
I wondered at Lester’s stumbling entrance earlier. “Tremors?”
“Nothing like that.” But then Daryl’s face clouded. “He has been a little shaky.”
Lester cooperated when I took his temperature. Usually, he wiggled with enough vigor to require a second set of hands. When I palpated his stomach, he whined. Some pain there.
“His temperature’s on the high end of normal,” I said. “In that unsupervised minute, or at any other time, did Lester have access to any toxins?”
“You think Lester ate something he shouldn’t have.” It wasn’t a question. We both knew the Lab’s proclivity for eating unusual items, like the coins I had surgically removed less than twenty-four hours before.
“It could be anything—moldy food from the garbage, antifreeze, medication, some plants, chocolate. Snail or gopher bait. Nicotine. Anything like that?”
I hadn’t noticed any burns in Lester’s mouth that would suggest the ingestion of chemicals, but such effects might not show for hours.
“I watched him,” Daryl said, his voice tight, as he rubbed his dog’s ears. Lester remained still, head resting between outstretched paws. “I would’ve noticed.”
The Lab shifted on the table, suddenly restless, his quiet whimper becoming an insistent keening.
“I know you take great care of him, Daryl.” As I continued the exam, I weighed my options. Should I induce vomiting? That would only be useful if he had ingested the poison within the past hour. I worried it might be too late for that, that whatever had poisoned Lester might have already started to irreparably damage his organs, and I feared the Lab’s recent surgery would leave him ill-equipped to fight the toxin’s effects.
Just then Lester heaved, the vomit thick and a brown that was nearly black. In my practice, I had treated several dogs for chocolate toxicity, and all had survived. But something about this case disturbed me. Some detail was different. I stared at the discharge, but saw nothing.
“Looks like chocolate,” Daryl said. I detected relief and understood why. With the many things Lester had swallowed over the years, and the scary-sounding toxins I had named a few minutes earlier, chocolate must have seemed the least of the potential dangers.
But I knew what Daryl didn’t: there was no antidote to theobromine, the chemical sickening Lester now. I could only treat the Lab’s symptoms. I could give him diazepam for his tremors, or propranolol for any arrhythmia. I could, and would, administer activated charcoal for the chocolate that lingered in his stomach and intravenous liquids to prevent dehydration. I could make him comfortable.
There was a lot I could do—except guarantee I could save him. And, of course, that was the only promise Daryl wanted.
As if reading my mind, Daryl asked, “Is he going to be okay?”
I started to give the only possible answer, that I would do everything I could, but then Lester vomited again, and I realized what had disturbed me a minute earlier. In the pan was a thick, dark liquid. Only that. No scraps of silver or plastic. In the other cases of chocolate toxicity I had treated, there had always been bits of wrapper.
It could have been a fluke. The evidence could still be in Lester’s stomach, awaiting later discovery. Still, I suspected I would never find a wrapper, and even someone who hadn’t gone to veterinary school knew enough about canine anatomy to know this: dogs don’t unwrap their food.
6
I stabilized Lester, then transferred him to a facility with twenty-four-hour care. I tried not to dwell on the missing wrapper. Daryl baked his special brownies at least a couple of times a week, and it was conceivable the Labrador had stolen unwrapped chocolate from Daryl’s pantry.
Though the explanation didn’t fully satisfy me, I was distracted by a more immediate concern: Why wasn’t my key unlocking the front door to my house? The key slid in, but there it stuck. No amount of twisting freed the bolt.
Foggy-headed as I was, for a second, I wondered if this was how my marriage to Sam ended: with a key stuck in a lock, preventing entry to the home we had shared for sixteen years. Exhaustion opened the way to doubt. No matter how strong our marriage was, Sam had always been a better person than me. For the first few years, I had expected him to realize this, to pull away after getting a full look at who I truly was: a wild teenager who had morphed into a reckless and adrift young woman.
But somehow the opposite happened. With him, I found mooring. I know—you aren’t supposed to try to change the person you love, but we got married young, so we weren’t fully formed. Change was inevitable, and because of Sam, I changed for the better. At least that’s what I told myself. My father might have had a different opinion.
Still, there I was, standing on my front porch and doubting Sam because he had been too preoccupied to make love for a couple of weeks and had that morning preferred to take a phone call in private. In my place, Sam wouldn’t have doubted me. Like I said, a better person.
I tried the key again. Still stuck. Then I remembered the envelope Sam had dropped off to Zoe while I had been treating Lester, at the same time he had swapped his car for the rental I’d just driven home. The envelope contained my new house key, to fit the new locks. It should have made me feel safe.
I retrieved the new key, opening the door to darkness and a tiny dog bouncing at my feet. Other than Boo, the house was empty. Leo had texted to ask if he could spend the night at Tyler’s, but where were Sam and Audrey?